"Like a Thoughtless Child, Just Wandering by a Garden Yanking Leaves Along the Way..."

We not only live in the Darkest Timeline, also we live in the DUMBEST Timeline.

"Third Place" Marco Rubio just declared war on typography (via Humeyra Pamuk at Reuters):

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday ordered diplomats to return to using Times New Roman font in official communications, calling his predecessor Antony Blinken's decision to adopt Calibri a "wasteful" diversity move, according to an internal department cable seen by Reuters.

What the... The default font in Microsoft Word is WOKE?

The department under Blinken in early January 2023 had switched to Calibri, a modern sans-serif font, saying this was a more accessible font for people with disabilities because it did not have the decorative angular features and was the default in Microsoft products.

Anything positive for disabled people apparently triggers the Far Right...

Some studies suggest that sans-serif fonts, such as Calibri, are easier to read for those with certain visual disabilities.

Trump, a Republican, moved quickly after taking office in January to eradicate federal DEI programs and discourage them in the private sector and education, including by directing the firing of diversity officers at federal agencies and pulling grant funding for a wide range of programs.

DEI policies became more widespread after nationwide protests in 2020 against police killings of unarmed Black people, spurring a conservative backlash. Trump and other critics of diversity initiatives say they are discriminatory against white people and men and have eroded merit-based decision making.

All of the things that should matter in these dark times - ending Russia's invasion of Ukraine, ending Israel's devastation of both Gaza and the West Bank, stopping the war in Sudan, pulling back on trump's hostility towards Venezuela and most of Central/South America - Rubio is going after font usage because certain fonts offends the Far Right Male sensibilities.

I swear, I've seen this before in a Saturday Night Live skit:

You can just picture poor Marco suffering the way Ryan Gosling did:

Yeah. He just highlighted Avatar, he clicked the drop down menu and then he randomly selected Papyrus. Like a thoughtless child, just wandering by a garden yanking leaves along the way...

He just got away with it. This man, this professional graphic designer. Was it laziness? Was it cruelty...?

And now, here I am doing what I vowed to never do again, sitting outside his house, hoping to catch a glimpse of him to see him doing his little things, live his insane little life...

Ryan: Do you remember the Avatar logo?

Heidi: Um, yeah. It was tribal, yet futuristic.

Ryan: Papyrus!!!

(He sees the graphic designer glaring at him through a window)

Ryan: I know what you did! I... KNOW... WHAT... YOU... DID!!!

Seriously, if the Alpha Male Wannabes in the trump inner circle are obsessed with manliness, they should have gone with Trajan, a more accurate Roman based font.

Just one more thing that makes us THINK ABOUT ROME!!!

I can finally say Io Saturnalia, peeps!

Honest Bumper Stickers 2020: Could This Election Cycle Get ANY Crazier? ...Yes, It Can...

The Honest Bumper Stickers will take some time to reach a sizable number, but in the meanwhile I've got these created in the quick:

More are sure to follow.

Only trump Could Make the Legal Institution Dumber

Oh ye Gods, this will never end in a sane and rational manner. Via Adam L Silverman at Balloon-Juice, picking up on the story out of the New York Times:

Legal turduckens Jay Sekulow and John Dowd prepared a twenty page legal memo explaining why the President could not obstruct justice and therefore should not be interviewed by the Special Counsel as part of the Special Counsel’s ongoing investigation. Someone leaked it to The New York Times...

As one would expect of a legal memo produced by a well-past-his-prime John Dowd and a never-was grifter of the religiously devout Jay Sekulow, the memo is full of errors in legal reasoning. Again from The New York Times (emphasis Silverman's):

“There could not possibly have been intent to obstruct an ‘investigation’ that had been neither confirmed nor denied to White House counsel,” the president’s lawyers wrote.
Moreover, F.B.I. investigations do not qualify as the sort of “proceeding” an obstruction-of-justice statute covers, they argued.

“Of course, the president of the United States is not above the law, but just as obvious and equally as true is the fact that the president should not be subjected to strained readings and forced applications of clearly irrelevant statutes,” Mr. Dowd and Mr. Sekulow wrote.

But the lawyers based those arguments on an outdated statute, without mentioning that Congress passed a broader law in 2002 that makes it a crime to obstruct proceedings that have not yet started.

Samuel W. Buell, a Duke Law School professor and white-collar criminal law specialist who was a lead prosecutor for the Justice Department’s Enron task force, said the real issue was whether Mr. Trump obstructed a potential grand jury investigation or trial — which do count as proceedings — even if the F.B.I. investigation had not yet developed into one of those. He called it inexplicable why the president’s legal team was making arguments that were focused on the wrong obstruction-of-justice statute...

If I could interpret: trump's legal team has the conclusion that trump wields broad executive power under Article II of the Constitution, and it was merely their job to fit the best possible legal history to defend that conclusion. They probably don't even care that they're basing it on a law that no longer exists, a law that most judges - even Republican ones - would ignore in favor of the 2002 law that supplanted it.

What the lawyers are arguing is that trump as President can never obstruct justice, and indeed can shut down any criminal investigation at any time and by his whim.

As pointed out on Southpaw's tweet: Under this logic, the president could open a booth on Pennsylvania Ave to accept bribes, people under federal investigation could stop by with a briefcase full of cash, and he could order their investigations closed—all without incurring any criminal liability for himself.

There is no goddamn way the Founders intended Article II to grant any President the power to be a crook.

Silverman also points out that trump's own lawyers make the argument that "the President did, indeed, author the fraudulent statement for his son (donald jr.) regarding the 9 June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Jr, Jared, Manafort, and a variety of Russian assets and agents." Another potential obstructive act, but also creates a situation where donnie junior is on record lying about that meeting to Congressional committees.

This remains the major problem of working with an unrepentant bullshitter like trump: He lies so often that you can't keep track, and his current statements / arguments will undermine previous ones with reckless abandon.

It would be frivolous to make mention that the leaked memo from Dowd's office was reportedly typed up in Comic Sans font.

Comic Sans font.

COMIC SANS FONT?!

The only font more evil than Papyrus.

PAPYRUS!!!

When you have a lawyer that works with the most unprofessional font in human history, you are not working with the best and brightest from the Martindale-Hubbell directory.

What is horrifying is how trump will push this argument to all ends, bully the system into accepting his interpretation, because he alone profits from it - both literal and metaphoric - on his path to Authoritarianism.

But how can we thrive when the would-be dictator is an idiot of the highest order, twisting his own legal help into idiots as well?

Troubling thoughts for troubling times.

Re-Designing The Horde's Lost Battalion Logo

To all the Ta-Nehisi followers on this thin raft...  I am looking to update the Lost Battalion of Platonic Conversationalists' logo for the swag getting sold on Cafepress.com.

To that end I am working on the next Font to use for the logo design (the artwork will take longer...unless I can get a graphic artist who's good with drawing Elves' Tools (DAMN YOU DISQUS!)).

These are the fonts I've chosen for the moment.  They are in order from top to bottom:

• AntiGrav
• Autodestruct
• LibertyD
• RedFive
• ThirteenOClock
• VillageIdiot
• WinterInGotham

If anyone's got a better Font to use as the "For the Horde!" battlecry, please name it and let me know if it's free downloadable somewhere.

And hey, Mr. Coates, would it hurt to have an Open Thread at Noon again?  Just for... old times' sake?